PRINTSexual Resolution
Alan Toigo used to be homosexual. Now he’s straight and married. Can people change their sexual identity?
Charles Ludeke
Alan Toigo leads a Bible study discussion at his home in Columbia.
October 1, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
On a brisk, sunny October afternoon in 2001, Alan Toigo, a sophomore at Truman State University, lay sobbing on the floor of his dorm room. Years of frustration, confusion and lies had brought him to a breaking point. Clutching a pair of scissors, he tossed out a quick prayer: “God, if you exist, stop me.” He slashed the blade across his wrist. It was dull. Weeping, he slid the scissors back and forth across his skin again and again, getting no result. No blood. No pain. No success. He was alone with the agony of his thoughts.
Toigo’s solitude was pierced when his computer chirped an Instant Message notification. The screen name was unfamiliar, but the word “angel” in the sender’s name caught his eye. Whoa, is this God’s answer? “Who is this?” he typed. “Becky Mank,” came the response. Weird. He hadn’t talked to her since eighth grade.
“How are you doing?” Becky asked. Feeling vulnerable, Toigo let his guard down. “Things are really bad right now,” he typed impulsively. “This semester has really sucked.” After listing some academic problems, he dropped the bomb. “I came back here and was thinking about killing myself,” he typed.
“Really?” Becky replied.
“Yeah, but I feel better now,” he wrote. Toigo was a mess, but the conversation had halted his suicide attempt. Toigo snapped into the “performance mode” that had helped him blunder through so many hard times throughout his life. Grabbing his backpack, he rushed off to lunch with his cousin. He went to classes and meetings as if nothing had happened. Although he hid beneath a façade of normalcy, Toigo had shown someone a hint of his struggle — a struggle that was far from over.
That night, one of Toigo’s suitemates interrupted a meeting he was attending to tell him that police were looking for him. Two officers were waiting in Toigo’s dorm. “We got some reports today that you had a conversation online about killing yourself,” the female officer probed. Toigo shrugged it off as too much stress. Lady, you don’t know me, get out of my face. Then, with a knock, came a university counselor who attempted to befriend Toigo.
Eventually, the counselor asked the trigger question. “Are you happy with the person you’ve become since coming to college?” Toigo crumbled. “I hate who I am since I came to college,” he said, starting to bawl. “The last year and two months I have totally lost who I am. I can’t live with the morals that I want to.” Emotionally exhausted, Toigo was silent about what had pushed him so far. He was grateful that God hadn’t abandoned him to die, but God hadn’t solved his problem yet.
Keeping the secret
Ryan Black, the coordinator of MU’s LGBTQ Resource Center, has attempted homosexual reparative therapy. Raised Southern Baptist, he understood homosexuality was not accepted in his church, so he kept it a secret and tried to pray away his feelings.
At 18, he entered a Christian ministry for former homosexuals in St. Louis and then attended a similar ministry in Denver. After four years, he thought he was being healed of homosexuality. He spoke before accountability groups and shared his testimony. But when he met and fell in love with his partner, he realized he had more questioning to do.
“I asked myself, ‘Have I really changed at all?’” Black says. “What are my deep-down feelings?”
He decided to research both sides of the issue. He read various translations of the Bible to examine different interpretations of passages regarding homosexuality.
“I decided God loved me for who I was,” he says. “God doesn’t make mistakes.” He says he found an incredible peace from the guilt he had constantly felt.
Black believes that sexual orientation is fluid, to a degree. “We change so much over time; I guess you could develop some desires for the opposite sex.” But Black thinks he’ll always have some same-sex feelings; that will never change. “I don’t believe it can happen,” he says.
Black would never tell people that they can’t try to change their sexual orientation; he would just encourage them to consider alternative ideas.
“I just know that I tried (to become straight) because I knew that society hated me; my church hated me,” Black says. “I thought I had to change. I never considered that maybe society had to change.”
--Nicole Mueller
Stephanie, 28, Trenton, 16 months, and Alan Toigo, 28, record a happy birthday message video ...
Alan and Stephanie Toigo play with their son Tretnon Toigo, 16 months, in his room ...
College had been hard, but Toigo’s struggle had started years earlier. When he hit puberty, he realized he was attracted to men. In fourth grade, he watched a soap opera and was turned on for the first time — by a male actor. That’s probably not right, he thought. In middle school, kids traumatized Toigo because he didn’t act like the other boys. All his friends were girls, and he wasn’t athletic or interested in sports. In a seventh grade, a classmate started taunting him. Queer. Fag. Homo. Toigo cried as the other kids laughed. No one stood up for Toigo, and resentment and hatred built up inside him.
Frequently, Toigo’s older brother Christopher beat him up when they got off the school bus. Once, Christopher kicked him down a flight of stairs. Pain stung his face as he smacked against the marble landing. “Why are you interrupting me at work?” his mother asked angrily when he called her for help. She called his father, who was furious at both sons. Just like at school, Toigo felt that he had no advocate at home.
Even though he had not “come out,” Toigo was experiencing the same social pressures and stigmas many young homosexuals face. A study of suicide risk and prevention for lesbian, gay and bisexual youths revealed that “LGB youth have significantly higher rates of suicide attempts and suicidal (thoughts) than their heterosexual peers.” The compilation of studies, prepared by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center in 2008, highlighted a study that found that 28.1 percent of gay or bisexual males attempt suicide at least once by the time they enter junior high or high school. Stigmatization, internalized homophobia and a lack of family support are all potential risk factors that weigh on these young men. Like others in Toigo’s position, concealing his homosexuality didn’t save him from the marginalization and internal friction that eventually led to a suicide attempt.
Living a double life
Although Toigo was never openly gay, in junior high and high school he had secret physical encounters with a guy he knew from school. Toigo always felt used by the young man, who didn’t consider himself to be gay and didn’t see the encounters as a relationship. Does anyone know? Everyone must know, Toigo thought.
During Toigo’s sophomore year of high school, a girl he knew invited him to her Christian youth group. The kids there didn’t seem to be cliquish or worried about appearances. Their parents treated him like family. Wow, these people really care about me, he thought. Toigo says he was raised in a moral household, but he and his family were not practicing Christians. That year, he started to feel genuine religious faith and became a Christian. But his problems weren’t gone: He never hinted to anyone about his struggle with homosexuality.
Though he was attracted to men, Toigo dated a girl named Allison for 18 months after becoming a Christian. He loved her but had to conceal his struggle, which deepened his conflict. In his mind, there was a huge division between his homosexual feelings and the rest of his life. It was a time of intense internal questioning. Why would God make me this way? He believed that the Bible condemned homosexuality, but Toigo didn’t know how to deal with the discrepancy between that and his feelings.
After high school, the secrecy continued. “Part of me hoped in college there would be freedom to either not feel gay anymore, or fall into a homosexual lifestyle,” Toigo says. “I didn’t want the tension anymore.” But with no resources to help him, he couldn’t escape the pressure. He vowed to live what he considered a moral life, but he easily gave in to partying and couldn’t prevent his homosexual thoughts and desires. Though he didn’t act on the homosexual feelings, they were always present.
Opening up
After his suicide attempt, Toigo became more involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, an international Christian ministry he had been a part of since his freshman year at Truman. During the second semester of his sophomore year, Toigo sat with other students and shared prayer requests. When Toigo’s time came, he broke down. He let out part of the trauma in his life but not all of it. “My mom is having an affair,” he blurted. Part of his façade was crumbling. The others listened as he poured his heart out. When he finished, the student leader looked him straight in the eye. “Let’s pray about this right now,” she said. One by one, others opened up. The small prayer group took off as more students came to unload their problems.
“God had already been working in my life before that,” Toigo says. “But this is the point when I started to really see it.” Toigo had not shared his biggest secret, but he was gaining a support system.
Toigo spent part of the following summer on a trip with Crusade in San Diego. A group of men on the trip often got together to talk. There, he felt comfortable enough to reveal his struggle with homosexuality for the first time. He vented his feelings. Then he waited. What are they gonna say? The silence didn’t last long. “I have almost the exact same story,” another guy said. Toigo was shocked. He sensed no judgment from the group. Wow, I can be myself around these guys, he thought. He felt the love and acceptance he had longed for.
“My identity shifted that first Summer Project,” Toigo says. “A Bible verse jumped at me — it said we’re a new creation in Christ. I was no longer defined by my homosexual struggle or by my family problems. I saw my identity in Christ. I found a life that hadn’t failed me yet.” Toigo says he had no homosexual thoughts for the entire summer. Though he believed he had been miraculously healed, his struggle re-emerged as soon as the trip ended. It wasn’t until the following summer that he actively sought help to change himself.
Developing a new identity
After his first summer in San Diego, Toigo attended a Campus Crusade for Christ conference in Denver. After listening to Mike Haley of the organization Focus on the Family speak about coming out of homosexuality, Toigo’s entire paradigm changed. He cried the entire presentation because Haley had a similar story to his, and he realized he had the option to come out of homosexuality.
The following summer, Toigo returned to San Diego as a staff intern for Campus Crusade for Christ before his senior year at Truman. There, his future boss, Matt Thiessen, challenged him. He said Toigo hadn’t resolved his problems yet and needed to actively pursue healing from his sexual brokenness. Toigo read the book You Don’t Have to Be Gay by Jeff Konrad and answered the questions in each chapter. He came to see his homosexual feelings as coming from underlying elements in his past, such as feeling unloved by his father, being overly sensitive and lacking the approval of his male peers.
The book outlines steps a man can take to develop a “healthy masculine identity.” As he worked toward the steps, Toigo says his attraction to men gradually faded and he entered a period of asexuality. He had many doubts. What if I can’t really change? What if this whole thing is a sham? But he kept practicing his faith, and eventually he noticed an attraction to women.
“The first time I remember being attracted to a girl … well, I saw Britney Spears dancing on TV and got turned on,” he says with a laugh. “I was like, whoa, this is different.”
Differing views
Until the ’70s, psychologists attempted to “cure” homosexuals. Now, studies have convinced some researchers that homosexuality is natural. Matt Ridley’s book, Genome, a national bestseller published in 2000, addresses the possibility of a “gay gene.” According to Genome, “There is no room for doubt that homosexuality is highly heritable.” The book cites a study conducted by Dean Hamer in 1993. He discovered a gene on the X chromosome that seems to exist in a different version in gay men than in straight men. In addition to ongoing research, many homosexuals say from personal experience they were born gay.
Toigo respects people who believe they are born gay and who don’t think homosexuality damages them. But he disagrees and wants them to consider his opinion with respect. “In a country that values free speech, that questions everything, why can’t I question the gay movement’s claim that I was born gay?” Toigo says.
To Toigo, it’s okay to change a person’s identity. “A lot of people aren’t satisfied with who they are. Everyone tries to change their external identity, why not internal?” he asks. “Why would there be a self-help industry or any kind of psychiatry if it wasn’t okay to change people?”
Toigo believes that homosexuality is wrong, but that many Christians have a double standard: They consider homosexuality a worse sin than their own shortcomings. He believes all humans struggle with a sinful nature. “We wrongly hone in on homosexuality as a worse evil than all the others,” he says. Toigo believes the church should help people heal their wounds instead of judging them.
Living a new life
During Toigo’s process of sexual reorientation, he met a woman, Stephanie, through a mutual friend. Eventually, he decided he was ready for a relationship with her. In a nerve-wracking phone conversation, he told her about his homosexual struggles and healing. This girl is either going to stand by me or run for the hills, he thought. She didn’t run. Instead, she thought Toigo’s story was beautiful. On May 28, 2005, they were married in Kansas City.
Currently, Toigo says he feels very connected to his parents, who have both become Christians in the past seven years.
The Toigos now work with students at MU, Columbia College and Stephen’s College as their full-time jobs with Crusade. Believing that God uses all situations for the good of his people, Toigo feels his struggles equip him to help college students with a range of emotional issues.
“My experience was not just the homosexual thing, it’s the story of a radically transformed life,” Toigo says. “I am not the same person I was 10 years ago.” Toigo doesn’t work exclusively with students who have sexual identity issues, but many seek him out. He doesn’t believe in forcing his story on anyone who hasn’t asked him, but he loves to help those who he senses God sends his way. He tries to show Christ as the advocate for those who stand alone like he once did.
Stephanie used to work on campus, but now she works from home and stays with their son, Trenton, who was born in May 2008. She did her own research on sexual identity issues after their wedding and is honored to aid his ministry. “I knew if he worked in an office cubicle, he would never get the opportunity to share his story the way he would with Crusade,” she says.
Toigo still gets nervous about how people will react to his story, but he believes everything has a purpose. “I have to relinquish the rights to my life to God,” he says. “Whatever happens, there is a reason for it.”
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